Last update - 00:00 28/01/2007
It happened to Nahum Barnea
By Orit Shochat
Had that poisonous outburst not been printed by the hundreds of thousands in the weekend magazine of Yedioth Ahronoth, had its author not been Nahum Barnea, that guru of journalism, had it been written during any other week and not closely following the president's speech, it would have been possible to let it go without a response. But these are not normal times.
This is what Nahum Barnea wrote in his weekly column: "Shelly Yachimovich is a former journalist who betrayed her profession. It is perhaps appropriate to use a less polite term to describe her actions in her instantaneous move from Channel 2 to the Labor benches of the Knesset. Yachimovich brought to politics all of the faults of her previous vocation, the ego and the arrogance and the certainty in people's guilt or innocence without a trial.
"Yachimovich's journalistic ethics have approximately the same moral validity as Elhanan Tenenbaum's opinion on patriotism."
What was Yachimovich's sin? First, that she denounced the behavior of the journalists who were at the President's Residence when Moshe Katsav gave his speech Wednesday night. Nahum Barnea was one of them. Yachimovich called it "the silence of the lambs." She also disagreed with Barnea over the president's right to cry out. She thought that it was actually Gadi Sukenik who behaved in a professional manner when he attempted to halt the wave of one-sided accusations and demanded that Katsav respond to his questions. She thought it was a scandal to send in the security guards to silence him.
Yachimovich also sinned by switching from reporting to politics. Barnea does not explain why journalists, as opposed to housewives, executive secretaries, rabbis, teachers and farmers, are not permitted to change their profession and represent the public in the Knesset. The switch earned Yachimovich the epithet "traitor." Just as Elhanan Tenenbaum betrayed the country and is prohibited from preaching to us about patriotism, so Yachimovich has forfeited the right to preach to us about journalistic ethics. Betrayal is betrayal. Treason is punishable by death in some countries, and journalistic treason is punishable by public condemnation by the country's most respected journalist. Ego and arrogance are indeed the principle enemies of the profession of journalism.
During the last Lebanon war, the media were accused of treason because it is easier to attribute the failure to reporters than to the Israel Defense Forces. The reporters who were the target of the first wave of wrath immediately created a committee of inquiry headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner to determine what they did wrong. In the meantime, attention was diverted to the real causes for the failure. And now, journalism is to blame for the president's being suspected of rape. The reporters who for years had heard about Moshe Katsav's misdeeds from women who had worked with him did not publish a word about them to give him the benefit of the doubt, and nevertheless they are guilty. These accusations fall again and again on receptive ears because it is easier to think that the president is to be pitied, the complainant is a whore, Mizrahim are persecuted and reporters are a clique of executioners, than it is to look in the mirror.
Not only is Yachimovich a politician and a former journalist, she also symbolizes the opposite of the submissive woman, a woman like Gila Katsav, to whom Barnea's heart justifiably goes out. Yachimovich is the opposite of the woman who stands by her man even when he very publicly disrespects her. Many believe that is how a wife should act. Yachimovich represents the kind of opinionated feminism that many find daunting. Although she always fought against expressions of arrogance and ego and accusing the innocent, she did not win Nahum Barnea's heart. Yosef Lapid, who was always part journalist and part politician, did not have the honor of being accused of treason.
What is that treason, exactly? Does the shift from journalism to the Knesset require a cooling-off period? Is it as corrupt as a finance minister who resigns on Sunday in order to represent a billionaire client against the state on Monday? The move from journalism to the Knesset is not necessarily a move from one side to the other. It is hard to find a conflict of interest. Both serve the public, for pay. From which professions is it permissible to enter the Knesset, in Barnea's opinion? Perhaps only casino gambling, bar bouncing and furniture sales. Maybe the Knesset is the place where Shin Bet and Mossad intelligence agents are supposed to spend their retirement.
Much can be said about journalism: about its shallowness, about the fact that it often provides free publicity for media advisers and public relations agents, about its over-reliance on leaks from the police, but very few journalists have been convicted on corruption charges. Even though anyone can be a journalist - and this is a basic principle of a profession that is designed to ensure freedom of expression - very few professions have a natural selection process that is as effective. Anyone can begin to be a journalist, but few remain. Above every reporter is an editor, above every editor is another editor, and this professional hierarchy quite successfully weeds out the poseurs and the slackers and the liars and the ones who are corrupt. That is how it usually works, until a journalist attains such a senior and respected status, truly a guru in his own eyes and in the eyes of those around him, that no editor dares tell him when he has written a column that is an embarrassment to himself and his profession.
That is how it happens that pieces, written by people whom editors trust but which should never have been published, get into the newspaper and specifically onto the respected op-ed pages. That is what happened last week to Nahum Barnea.